


A Different Dimension

by frantic65



Category: Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 22:44:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10545606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frantic65/pseuds/frantic65
Summary: Ennis has relocated to Sage when he begins to get mysterious phone calls. Canon Based AU





	

_A Different Dimension_  
You're from a whole 'nother world  
A different dimension  
You open my eyes  
And I'm ready to go  
Lead me into the light  
~E.T. by Katy Perry~ 

The static-filled phone calls were unexpected, and at first unwelcome. 

I had finally broken down and had a phone installed in my one room in the boarding house I had settled into when I made the move from Riverton to Sage about two years after he died. 

Two years after I realized I should have given him what he wanted…what I had fucking needed all them years ago, when we were young and falling in love on a lonely mountain. 

But I was stupid and stubborn back then, and I cared more about what other people…strangers…would think about me than the only person whose opinion ever should have mattered. 

Young and foolish. It described both of us to a certain extent. And I would give anything in the world…in the entire fucking universe, just to have one more night with him.  
Even if it was only to tell him I loved him and I was sorry I hadn’t tried harder to make him happy. 

I had abandoned my decrepit trailer outside Riverton when the ranch I’d been working on went bankrupt, leaving the land and the trailer in the hands of a developer that didn’t waste any time building some cookie cutter sub-division with a whole lot of fancy shops and restaurants sprawling like a blight across the wide open spaces. 

I’d heard about some part-time work down in Sage, and since my girls were old enough to have lives of their own that didn’t require having a daddy living a few miles away, I decided to make a change. The fact that my new life put me in a town at the foot of the mountains where I’d first met him was strangely comforting to me, although the dreams I began to have about him as soon as I moved in were anything but tranquil. 

The ranch I was working had a clear view of the mountain range, and I spent many hours staring up at old Brokeback lost in the memories of my foolish youth. As the bleak and desolate winter days gave way to the promise of the new life of Springtime, I found myself growing increasingly restless when in the mountain’s view, with stormy days being the worst. I would hear his voice in the echo of the thunder and the moaning of the winds, and I would bow my head and speak to him, asking his forgiveness and praying he would somehow find peace. 

My girls had made me promise to get a phone of my own, no making do with a payphone down the street or at the truck stop for communicating with them. I agreed and they each took turns checking in with me weekly; a situation I found more than worth the addition of a utility bill to my monthly budget.

The first call came on an unusually hot and humid April night. Flashes of lightning seemed to shoot like a beacon from the direction of Brokeback, with the ominous rumbling of thunder surrounding Sage like a personal message from God.

No sooner had the thought crossed my mind when the phone rang. There was a strange quality to the tone, both muted and insistent at the same time, and as I picked it  
up, I felt an electric charge shoot throughout my body. There was no physical pain; only an ache that lodged deep within my chest, as though a part of me was responding to an  
echo of a touch I had not felt in more than two years.

I held the receiver to my ear, and rubbed my tingling hand against the roughness of my jeans.

"Hello?" I pulled the phone away as loud static answered me. "I can't hear you. The connection is poor."

I was ready to disconnect and hope the other party called me back on a better line, but I suddenly heard my name within the radio squeals and waves of white noise, so I  
pressed the receiver back against my head.

"Who is this?" I spoke loudly, trying to identify the voice that was now repeating my name. "I can barely hear you."

"Ennis? Oh...m--...God, I---....--inally gott-- thro---."

My blood ran cold, and I fell on my knees striking the hard wood of the floor roughly, but I felt no discomfort.

"Who is this?" I repeated hoarsely, wondering what new insanity was coming for me after two fucking years of mourning and trying to move on with a life that had become  
empty and meaningless.

"--t's Jac--" returned the voice, the static getting louder with pops and high-pitched spirals of sound joining into the discordant chorus.

Jesus Christ!

"Who the fuck is this?" I repeated, clenching the handset so tightly my hand began to go numb; matching the rest of my body. "This is not funny, whoever you are." Mentally I  
was screaming 'Hang up, it's nothing but a sick joke. Someone found out and now they'll be coming for you.'

But I didn't hang up. I clung to the phone like a child to it's mother, desperate to believe as impossible as it was, it really was him. The storm was raging outside my window, with bolts of lightning striking so close to my building I could smell the electrical discharge in the air around me.

"Ennis." The static cleared suddenly, and I let out a moan of despair as his loss hit me again like a bullet to the brain.

"Jack." I whispered, my fingers entwined in the phone cord, wishing I could touch him just one more time.

"Ennis." The static was still gone, but now his voice was starting to fade. "Meet me in the meadow. Miss you so much!"

And then he was gone. The connection was broken and I was left listening to a dial tone. I realized there was dead silence from outside my window, the storm having tapered off as quickly as it had begun.

There was one last brilliant flash of light that caused me to cover my eyes instinctively, and when I opened them again I could swear the after image that appeared to linger strangely with an eerie neon glow, spelled out the words, **MISS YOU** across the otherwise now clear night sky.

By the next morning I had convinced myself that the phone call from Jack was simply an hallucination on my part, the fault of too little sleep and too much whiskey; both reasons easier to accept than what I knew deep within me to be the truth. 

I picked up some extra hours at the ranch since it was at the height of the spring birthing season, so by the time I got home I was sweaty, tired, and longing only for my bed. 

As I left the common bathroom I shared with several other boarders, towel roughly drying my hair as I entered my room, I heard the sound of thunder in the distance, and a cold chill caused a shiver to travel the length of my body. 

I walked slowly toward my front window, which had a partial view of Brokeback in the background, a sight that was normally bittersweet but still coveted by me after all the years and all the pain that mountain had ultimately cost me.

I gazed at the dark clouds that covered the peak and noticed uneasily that another strong storm appeared to be brewing up there tonight. I looked anxiously at the phone as the thunderhead suddenly seemed to head directly at me. 

The lightning and rain appeared without warning, this time with quarter-sized hail and wicked gusts of wind howling their way across the distance.

When the phone rang, I bit my thumbnail nervously before grabbing the receiver on the third ring. 

I was breathing heavily as I answered, sitting down shakily on a kitchen chair as I heard first static, then a familiar voice, this time sounding stronger and much clearer. 

"Ennis?" I shut my eyes and rubbed them wearily, wondering how long it took to go stark, raving insane, and what my girls would think when they were told I'd been committed to a mental institution.

"Ennis?" his voice was warm and friendly, and a hungry sound left my throat as I realized just how much I had missed hearing that tone in his voice; a tone I suspected he saved for me alone. "I can hear you breathing. You're not going crazy, friend, it's really me."

"Stop it." I whispered brokenly, "This is too cruel, even though I suppose I deserve all this and more."

"Ennis, don't none of that matter anymore, you'll come to see." he spoke softly, the static from the night before simply slight background noise, as was the storm outside my windows. 

"Jack, I don't understand." I heard the tremor in my voice, and I cursed myself for falling deeper into this fantasy. "You're...dead." My voice cracked and I angrily brushed away the tears that I suddenly realized were streaming down my face.

"I can explain it all, but I need you to come to me. There's only so much I can do, and walking into Sage and knocking on your door isn't one of them."

"Are you a ghost?" I felt a small flare of anger. "You fucking haunting me?"

He laughed at that and the anger disappeared and I smiled despite myself as I let the welcome sound surround me. 

"That's better." He answered approvingly. "If you can get pissed at me, it means you're ready to listen." 

"Jack, are you really alive?" I found myself getting aroused at the thought, even though I knew it was wrong to feel that way when I wasn't even sure if I was in the throes of some insane waking nightmare...or dream, depending on how it ended. 

"I can explain it all when I see you, but you have to meet me at the meadow on Brokeback tomorrow night." his voice deepened and I knew I would do whatever he asked of me just as I had so recently promised him after I discovering the shirts he had hidden all those years, my having never given him a reason to present them as proof of his constant love to my stubborn ass.

"I have to go now." he continued, the static gaining volume again. "Please Ennis.....tomo--....nightfa--....our...meado--. " and then once again, just like the night before he was gone.

I pulled myself over to the window on legs that barely held me up, leaning heavily against the sill as I searched the sky for another message....a sign I guess...that maybe I wasn't going crazy after all; that maybe he had found some way to come back to me, as insane as that idea was.

As if in answer to my unspoken question, there was again that same brilliant flash of light in the sky overhead. This time when I opened my eyes I couldn't hold back a startled cry as I read the letters hanging there above me. **MEET ME IN THE MEADOW.**

I stayed home from work the next day, wanting to get an early start out to the mountain, knowing it would take me most of the day to get to meadow for my rendezvous with whatever it was that fate had planned for me. In some ways, it was a fitting place for me to go if I was about to have a complete mental breakdown. I would be alone with no worrying about hurting innocent bystanders if I became violently unstable. 

I reached the meadow at dusk, and I stood there just thinking back to the boy I once was, back when life was so much simpler, back when Jack and I were falling in love. 

As darkness descended on the mountain, with the suddenness that I had grown used to many years ago, I shut my eyes and thought of him, the way he’d looked the first time I’d seen him, the first time he’d touched me so soft and gentle…the first time I’d struck out and hurt him…the first of many times I’d disappointed him. 

I wondered if this whole series of circumstances wasn’t but a complicated way my mind was attempting to make peace with the countless wrongs I’d done him, a way of dealing with the guilt that pressed down upon me daily ever since the day I’d found out he was gone.

I was pulled from my bleak thoughts by a sharp gust of wind, and I opened my eyes to discover that another of the freakish storms was bearing down on the meadow, this time with me right in its angry path.

There was a flash of lightning that made my skin crawl from the waves of electricity that surrounded me in its aftermath. I cried out in fear, but I made no move to find any sort of cover. I remained where I was, alone in the middle of flat meadow in the midst of a violent electrical storm. I was beyond caring about my well-being, and a feeling I could only describe as anticipation began to come over me. 

A small part of my mind was beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, the impossible was about to become a reality.

As the wind picked up and the rain began to fall, I opened my arms wide and shouted his name to the stormy sky. My clothes were soaked and my hair was plastered against my face, but I felt as though something that had been restraining me for my whole life had finally disappeared, leaving me with a feeling I could only describe as freedom.

The lightning struck again, this time close enough that I fell backwards from the heat and the intensity of the flash, temporarily blinded and not quite sure if I was still in one piece. 

I opened my eyes, and as my sight returned I welcomed the torrential rain that had begun to fall from the heavens. I struggled back onto my feet, mouth open in disbelief as my rain-clouded eyes caught a movement in the meadow about one hundred yards in front of me. 

A bright sliver of light pulsed gently, slowly dimming as the deluge of rain began to dissipate, and my vision cleared. I saw a shape begin to emerge from what appeared to be the center of this column of light, with no source that I could see to explain its existence. 

The storm seemed to move off in a circular motion, leaving a clearing of calm that surrounded me and the mysterious figure that began to walk toward me leaving the odd ray of light behind him. 

I felt no fear, because by this time, I had decided that to try to explain what was happening in any sane manner would be useless; I had passed the point of no return, and my mind was completely open to whatever may come, perhaps for the first time in my entire life. 

The rain was still falling, but gently now, like the softest of April showers, warm and inviting, caressing me in a way that was both erotic and tender. I squinted as the figure approached, but even before I was able to focus, I knew it was him. 

I knew it was him. 

No matter what the strange circumstances were surrounding his appearance, I knew it was him. 

Somehow he had found a way to come back for me, and this time, I was never letting him out of my sight again.

And so I took his hand and pulled him close, trusting that he would keep me safe as we continued on our journey to a place he had discovered where we could live our lives in a way we couldn’t here.

Together.

We had been given a second chance.


End file.
